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An open letter to those NHLers who voted Dion Phaneuf the most overrated player in the league in a Sports Illustrated poll of 161 players.

Dear Jealous, Petty Gentlemen:

I’m sure you have your reasons. Maybe his $6.5 million salary is bigger than yours. Maybe his girlfriend is lovelier and more famous than yours. Maybe he hurt your feelings with some brash on-ice slight or another. Maybe his endorsement deals for energy potion and trendy parkas and hockey equipment have you calling your agent saying, “If Phaneuf can get that, why can’t I?”

But let’s face it, fellas. The vast majority of you can’t get it because you’re not the captain of the most watched, most loved and most valuable hockey club on the planet. You can’t get it because you wear neither No. 3 nor the C for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

You can’t get it, gents, and we feel for you. But that’s no reason to take it out on a guy who can. Envy and lust and wrath are deadly sins. And as Brian Burke, the Leafs GM, was saying on radio the other night, defending Phaneuf: “People love to hate the Toronto Maple Leafs.”

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Look, there’s no Leafs apologist residing in this space. But there’s also no logical argument that Phaneuf is the league’s most overrated player—or overrated at all. There may have been a point, a few years back, when he was. But you can’t possibly be considered overrated when the franchise that drafted you 9th overall is less than two years removed from effectively giving up on you at age 24, which is what the Calgary Flames did when they dealt Phaneuf to Toronto. You could make a better case, given the relative chaff the Flames took back in the deal and given that Phaneuf is headed to his first all-star game since leaving Calgary, that he ranks as one of the most grossly underrated assets in recent NHL memory.

In other words, there’s obviously something other than thoughtful logic behind him being labelled Mr. Overrated.

As Carl Gunnarsson, Phaneuf’s teammate, was saying on Thursday: “It’s just he’s a pain in the ass to play against, probably. And he likes to talk out there, chirp guys. Some guys might have something against it and just put him on that list I guess. I wouldn’t mind that too much. I don’t think Dion does.”

Said Phaneuf: “I didn’t lose any sleep over it.”

Maybe some of you hate Phaneuf and the Leafs for perfectly valid reasons; that’s your right. But it’s easy to get the sense that a lot of you hate the Leafs simply because you wish your team had what they have, which, among many things, includes the unconditional and inexhaustible love of one of North America’s great cities.

You can’t get what Phaneuf gets because most of you play in places where panhandlers who work busy corners are better known around town than you. You can’t be overrated, most of you, because you’re not rated. You can’t be polarizing figures because you’re barely public figures.

We here in the centre of the hockey universe — your phrase, not ours, at least judging by how often it’s uttered by aw-shucks NHLers in the visitors’ dressing room at the Air Canada Centre — know the argument against playing in Toronto. We’ve seen those of you who play alongside deserts and sea resorts smirk as you say, “We make our millions and nobody with a microphone bothers us for weeks.” If that’s your take on life, you over-golfed, over-sunned denizens of the game’s irrelevant and insolvent outposts, enjoy your anonymity.

Just know that hockey tickets, where Phaneuf plays, are family heirlooms, and that hockey tickets, where you play, are those free things stapled to the pizza box.

Those of us who care about the game aren’t impressed that you’re content to be ignored. The athletes we’ve come to truly appreciate relish the spotlight, crave the big stage. Phaneuf, after some early stumbles, has embraced life under the Bay Street glare, and he’s currently prospering.

Certainly that’s another Toronto-based truth that has to stick in the craw of you pros residing in non-traditional markets. Phaneuf has mass popularity —as evidenced by his fan-voted spot in the all-star starting lineup — and yet the Leafs are coming up on the 8th anniversary of their most recent playoff game. Imagine the filthy lucre in which he’ll bathe if he leads his squad to, say, a single post-season victory.

Maybe, in the end, your voting for Phaneuf, like a lot of negative emotions, will have the opposite of its intended effect. You’d all clearly love to see him struggle, but this poll, in its little way, is more likely to help him succeed. For years Burke has been railing against Blue and White Disease, the sense of entitlement that’s bred in a city in which two-way-contract bubble players are afforded celebrity and all its perils. This kind of a poll, if it’s good for anything, gives a man who has everything a couple of important gifts: A renewed sense of purpose, for one, and a reminder he’s very much being watched.

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